1. We’ll start with the good stuff. Kudos to the Canton Repository and reporter Kelli Weir for this fantastic story—and timely reminder as the new school year begins—that Ohio’s new Afterschool Child Enrichment (ACE) program is open for business! We get a great look at some summer camps which a private school family were able to afford thanks to ACE and a nice look at some of the afterschool options coming up for other eligible Stark County families. Additional props for making sure to remind readers that school type attended doesn’t matter and that kids from ages 6 to 18 can participate. Not to mention the links to more information. Awesome! (Canton Repository, 8/12/22)
   
   

2. Staying on the good side of the ledger for a moment, Steubenville City Schools gets a nice shout out in this piece from the Christian Science Monitor on successful recovery from the pandemic learning slide. By “reopen[ing] quickly for in-person learning five days a week in fall 2020 with safety measures in place,” hiring a bunch of tutors immediately, and having teachers run “solution teams” to address issues such as student absenteeism and family engagement, Stuebenville’s supe says that spring 2022 test scores were “pretty close to what we’ve always gotten.” And regular readers of these clips will recall that Steubenville was often held up as a high-poverty district doing well by its students long before anyone ever heard of SARS-CoV-2. (Christian Science Monitor, 8/11/22)
   
   

3. However, we fall off the cliff pretty hard with this piece about the lawsuit against Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program. As usual, aspects of how the voucher program works are misstated, both by folks who know and hate it and by folks who simply don’t know enough about it to know they’ve got important details wrong. Additionally, while the group suing over the program includes Wooster City Schools on its list as party to the suit, the district supe denies this on the record. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a story that should have been held back for a bit more fact checking. We're available for that, folks. Any time. (The Daily Record, 8/11/22)
   
   

4. And speaking of lawsuits, the promised temporary restraining order was filed against Sylvania City Schools’ new busing plan this week. At issue is the proposed circuitous and lengthy transportation routes for resident students attending private schools. School starts Monday. (WTOL-TV, Toledo, 8/11/22)

    

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One of the things I love most about the education reform movement is our willingness to look critically at ourselves—our strategies, tactics, outcomes, and more—and argue about whether we need to adjust course. That we do so out in the open tends to drive the advocacy wing of the movement crazy, as it complicates their lives, but disputation seems built into our DNA. And so it is that articles declaring “the end of school reform” pop up regularly—maybe not so often as petunias but certainly more frequently than seventeen-year cicadas.

Right on schedule, then, comes the latest declaration of reform’s demise, this one from two of my very favorite people in the whole world: my mentor Checker Finn and my good friend Rick Hess. Writing in National Affairs, they ask if this is “The end of school reform?” and answer that reform has “come unglued in the face of polarization and populist backlash.”

It’s worth reading all 5,000 words; the authors provide a compelling history of the reform movement’s rise and fall, with many smart insights about compromises that the left and right made to keep the coalition together—and why those compromises eventually became untenable.

But more needs to be said, some of it more optimistic than Checker and Rick. Here I offer four insights of my own.

First, I argue that their essay isn’t about the “end of school reform” so much as the end of the bipartisan ed reform coalition—what Rick and I used to call “the Washington Consensus.”

Second, I contend that the Consensus’s demise was caused primarily, though not entirely, by forces outside education, most critically the populist backlash to the Great Recession that still hasn’t burned itself out.

Third, I note that, despite rocky days for this consensus, education reform continues apace—and continues to rack up victories for kids. (This is good!)

Fourth, I acknowledge that we’d be better off with a new Washington Consensus than without it, and offer some ideas on how to rebuild it. Here I depart from another worthy colleague, Daniel Buck, who is happier than I am to welcome a new reform agenda that is stridently populist and partisan.

I. The end of the Washington Consensus

Rick and I described the Washington Consensus way back in 2006—when we were already watching it weaken. Let’s roll the tape:

The term “Washington Consensus” originated in foreign policy circles. It refers to ideas that enjoy widespread support among political elites across the ideological spectrum. No matter which party is in power, so long as the Washington Consensus stays in place, policies change only in minor ways.

There is now a Washington Consensus in education. It has been entrenched since the middle of the Clinton Administration, was integral to the crafting of NCLB in 2001, and for the most part remains intact today. It embraces three big ideas. First, that the nation’s foremost education objective should be closing racial and economic achievement gaps. Second, that excellent schools can overcome the challenges of poverty. And third, that external pressure and tough accountability are critical components of helping school systems improve.

These ideas took shape as a series of federal mandates, most visibly enshrined in NCLB. States had to set academic standards in English language arts, math, and science; to test students annually in math and reading and regularly in science; and to create accountability systems that would not only report results, but also intervene in chronically-low-performing schools in very specific ways—the law’s “cascade of sanctions.” Meanwhile, as NCLB was debated, enacted, and implemented, the charter school movement expanded rapidly, and the best of these schools—what used to be grouped under the moniker of “No Excuses”—epitomized the three big ideas in flesh and blood while also working school choice into the reform agenda.

As Rick and I explained sixteen long years ago, support for these ideas, and the policies they birthed, was weaker at the state and local level. It was a Washington consensus, held by presidents and committee chairmen, secretaries of education and their top staff. It was not shared by rank-and-file lawmakers at the federal or state level—much less local school board members and educators in the trenches.

To be sure, parents and the public would voice support for various aspects of the reform package. Yes, there should be “accountability” in education. Of course, schools should have “high expectations.” It’s obvious that no child should be “left behind.” Parents should be able to pick their kids’ schools.

Such views turned up in polls and surveys—but they weren’t strongly or widely held. After all, surveys also reported widespread parental contentment with their own kids’ unreformed schools.

What’s remarkable, in hindsight, is how many policy victories reformers won despite relying almost entirely on elite-level support. Then again, that support was through the roof. Four American presidents, from George H.W. Bush through Barack Obama, embraced most or all of the reform package. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did so as part of an explicit push for voters in the center. Collectively, presidential leadership—with an assist from key Congressional stalwarts like Ted Kennedy, John Boehner, and George Miller—gave birth to Goals 2000, the Improving America’s Schools Act, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top, and with them federal support and cover for standards-based reform, charter schools, and more.

What also helped was the fact that the public wasn’t opposed to most of these reforms. They might not have been clamoring for change, but they weren’t dead set against these changes either; disinterested to neutral was more like it. Perhaps because, to that point at least, and for better and worse, the reforms didn’t have much impact on the vast majority of schools—especially those in affluent middle-class neighborhoods. Alas, that was not to last.

II. The Great Recession (and some reform overreach) killed the Washington Consensus

In Rick and Checker’s telling, it was the “peak technocracy” of the Obama years that killed the school-reform coalition, especially the Common Core standards and the populist backlash it sparked. That was part of it, of course, but I would argue that my friends have the causation backwards. The populist backlash came first, and Common Core became an easy early target. And that backlash was birthed by the Great Recession.

After all, it’s not like NCLB wasn’t technocratic. And it wasn’t like there wasn’t a fierce backlash to its testing and accountability provisions—some of it well-founded, given the law’s ham-handed design. Yet throughout the Bush Administration, the Washington Consensus remained intact, with reformers on the right and left staying firm about the importance of holding schools accountable, even if some of us conceded problems with the details of the law or its implementation.

But when W. left the White House for his Texas ranch, all that changed, at least on the Republican side of the aisle. With the economy in shambles, an unpopular war in Iraq grinding on, and Bush’s popularity in the toilet, his legacy came under fire, as well. Congressional Republicans turned against his “compassionate conservativism” (or what critics called “big government conservatism”) and reverted to their “limited federal role” stance on education. At the same time, the Democrats’ stimulus package—and generalized anger over the Great Recession—gave rise to the Tea Party movement on the right. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were witnessing the beginning of a full-fledged populist backlash—akin to what countries worldwide often experience in the wake of financial catastrophes.

President Obama and a handful of change-minded Congressional Democrats trudged onward, trying to use Race to the Top to push for one more major round of reforms. It would be the last hurrah. Rick and Checker are right that tying Common Core to Race to the Top funding was an enormous mistake. So, too, was pushing an ill-conceived teacher evaluation policy from Washington. Neither federally-mandated standards nor test-based accountability for individual teachers was part of the original Washington Consensus; they strained the coalition to the point of collapse.

Still, ill-minded reforms had come and gone before. What was new this time were the enveloping politics. As became clear by 2016, centrist candidates who worked across the aisle to get things done were not what the majority of the voting public wanted. Governance was out; a full-time culture war was in. The Washington Consensus was put on ice—and not just in education.

But here’s what’s essential to remember: The Washington Consensus was not the same as education reform. The consensus is gone (at least for now), but most of the reforms it birthed are still alive.

III. Education reform: “Not dead yet!”

It’s been half a decade now since we’ve had a president in office who embraced large parts of the education reform agenda. And there’s no denying that the Trump and Biden years have been extraordinarily challenging for the school reform movement (and everything else in America). “Negative polarization” is real, and it has infected just about all of us, whether we work on the Hill, in state policy roles, or in sundry ed reform organizations. Elected Democrats in Washington and around the country are increasingly hostile to charter schools, as seen with President Biden’s terrible proposed rules for the federal Charter Schools Program and the House Democrats’ continued attacks on that program. Republicans are at best indifferent to testing and accountability and on the warpath against any curricular materials deemed woke. Nobody is singing Kumbaya.

And yet. Let’s take a look at the real world, shall we?

• The charter school sector continues to grow, energized by the lackluster response of traditional public schools to the pandemic.
• The Common Core standards remain in place in a majority of states, even if they go by different names.
• Annual testing is still here—with better, tougher tests than we had a decade ago.
• High-quality instructional materials aligned to the standards continue to gain market share.
• And that’s not to mention the explosion of private school choice (mostly supported by Republicans) or the progress on school funding equity (mostly supported by Democrats).

And this is all very good! Especially in the wake of massive learning losses, we need kids, especially those from low-income families, to have access to excellent schools, including charters, to help them make rapid progress; we need schools aiming for college- and career-ready standards; we need to give teachers the tools to help their students reach those standards, most notably great instructional materials; we need the transparency of test results to know how kids, schools, and districts are doing.

In other words, as boring as it might sound, we need to stay the course—and in a great many places that’s what we’re doing. We need to stick with our current reform strategy, even—especially—in the wake of the pandemic. Keep growing charter schools. Keep expanding parental choice. Keep adopting high-quality instructional materials, and keep getting teachers trained up on them. Keep testing students regularly, and keep reporting the results. Keep being honest with parents and taxpayers about their students and schools are performing.

None of this stuff is easy; the details matter; implementation takes time. But the basic strategy is right. What could go wrong are the politics.

On that score, it helps that reformers ditched the two policies that led to so much heartburn a decade ago: the federal connection to the Common Core and the push for test-based teacher evaluations. There are lessons there, which I turn to next.

IV. Rebuilding the Washington Consensus

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in political science to see that the lack of both elite and grassroots support for much of the reform agenda makes it incredibly fragile. That’s especially true for the part of that agenda we used to call “standards-based reform.” (Charter schools and other forms of school choice at least create real, live constituents in the form of parents who will fight like hell to preserve their kids’ schools and their right to make such choices.) In particular, it’s not clear that ESSA’s testing and accountability requirements, limited though they are, could survive the election of a president committed to eliminating them. Losing them would be an enormous blow, putting state-level policies on testing, reporting, curriculum reform, and more at risk nationwide. Combined with education’s overheated culture wars, assuming they continue to rage, we could see state officials throw up their hands and go back to the Dark Ages whereby every school district reverts to doing its own thing, including in the core academic subject areas.

So what might we do to avert such a fate? Energizing grass-roots support for standards-based reforms would be fantastic—but I don’t think anyone knows how to do that. The other option, then, is to try to bring back the Washington Consensus at the elite level, at least in some form or fashion.

Those of us toiling in the policy fields can help by working to rebuild relationships across the political and ideological spectrum, to resist the pull of negative polarization, to avoid culture-war distractions, and to work together again on common causes. We can be smart enough not to try to add divisive items to the reform agenda and/or those that are likely to go badly when implemented in the real world of schools and classrooms, akin to teacher evaluation circa 2010.

And then we need to get lucky. We need for this current spasm of populist, polarized politics to come to an end, and for the American public to elect an “education president” again. That’s not as fanciful as it might sound. Populist spasms of the past didn’t last forever. And I can think of five plausible candidates from each party who might run in 2024 who would embrace the whole ed reform package.

The paradox is that education is an inherently local matter, and yet presidential leadership matters enormously—or at least it has for the past forty years. And someday soon, with some good fortune, we might have presidential will on education reform again.

In the latest issue of National Affairs, Chester Finn and Frederick Hess chronicle the splintering of the school reform movement that lasted from roughly 1983 until Trump’s presidency. After A Nation at Risk proclaimed an education crisis in America, conservative and liberal reformers formed a tenuous compromise around a technocratic set of reforms. The left saw that it could “ease the plight of the marginalized by concentrating on standards, testing, [and] teacher quality,” while the right eschewed talk of parental responsibility and family structure to instead focus its fire on teachers unions.

That compromise splintered for several reasons. Testing and accountability reforms faced a “populist backlash,” and as American polarization increased, conservatives and liberals both grew wary of reaching across the aisle. Finn and Hess conclude by lamenting that “it may be a while before a broad new reform agenda begins to coalesce.”

The essay is an insightful history of education reform over the past forty years. That being said, I don’t see the breakdown of compromise and consensus as a devastating loss. For a new consensus is already forming to take its place with its own set of goals: transparency, parental rights, school choice, and a back-to-basics focus in the classroom.

Finn and Hess acknowledge that, at the national level, “a host of business leaders, governors, and philanthropists” led the reform efforts, and at the local level, it was “an array of energetic reformers, open-handed donors, and advocacy organizations.” They’re absolutely right that this consensus broke down, but it’s crucial to note that it was a consensus within and among elites—donors, philanthropists, politicians, think tank wonks, and the like. In its place, I’d argue, we’re seeing a new coalition, this one populist and conservative. Three elements are worth noting.

First, today’s reform agenda leans into the culture wars. Finn and Hess note the former school reformers had a “tacit agreement to eschew cultural clash in favor of policy unity.” However, like it or not, that cultural clash has proven surprisingly unifying among the general public, even if it’s divisive among policy wonks and newspaper columnists. Testing isn’t unifying. “Don’t teach my children about sex” is.

Consider Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Despite the media calling it “controversial” and “divisive,” it actually garnered majority support from Floridians. Across demographics and political affiliation, polls found voters favored it by a 2-to-1 margin; even 55 percent of Democratic voters in the Sunshine State supported the measure. Similarly, school choice continues to be wildly popular among all demographics—earning 68 percent approval even among Democrats.

Second, it’s far more populist, which Finn and Hess allude to: “Many Americans started to recoil from what they saw as the handiwork of elite foundations, Washington bureaucrats, and over-credentialed experts.” Yesterday’s reform movement was decidedly technocratic, an attempt to adjust and readjust the levers and dials of American education to get to perfect outcomes on the NAEP gauge. Today’s reform movement coalesces around grassroots movements like Moms for Liberty and individual advocates like Chris Rufo.

Finally, the new coalition is definitively conservative. Two different surveys from Democrats for Education Reform and the American Federation of Teachers found that likely voters favor Republicans on issues of education and distrust Democrats. The new reform agenda is less a compromise across the aisle and more of an agreement around conservative policies.

This new agenda may be a one-sided agenda, but that doesn’t mean it should be considered a loss. Compromise and bipartisan consensus are only ideals if they achieve beneficial policies. History provides abundant examples of unity around injustices and historic wrongs. We shouldn’t cede the correctness of conservative education policies to compromise with, as Finn and Hess summarize progressive goals, the “dismissal of traditional notions of merit, historical revisionism of the kind pioneered by Howard Zinn, and alternatives to traditional academic instruction.”

And conservatives seemingly don’t need the collaboration of Democrats, at least not in much of the country. Last year, Jay P. Greene and James D. Paul ran a report through the American Enterprise Institute that found school choice bills largely passed without the votes of Democratic legislators. In fact, they worried that in making gestures of bipartisan compromise, many Republican legislators unnecessarily watered-down school choice bills by limiting the number of students who benefited from them. In other words, “big-tent consensus” came with a cost for students.

In sum, I don’t think Hess and Finn are necessarily wrong, but I find more hope than they do when I survey the current education landscape. All political coalitions form and ultimately fade. As the old, technocratic consensus splinters, a new one is already taking its place. It’s in its infancy, still parsing out what specific policies it will advance. As with all coalitions, it will be a mixture of positives and half-measures. But its first actions show promise.

The mental health crisis has been a persistent headline over the last few years, as research and anecdotal evidence indicates that pandemic-related disruptions have taken a toll. Much of the focus in the education world has been on students, and rightfully so—kids should always be the focus of education-related discussions. But the mental well-being of teachers is also important, and the pandemic has not spared them.

Even before Covid-19, teachers were struggling. A 2017 survey indicated that 58 percent of teachers reported that their mental health was “not good” for seven or more days in the previous month, a significant increase from the 34 percent who reported the same in 2015. Results from a PDK International poll published in 2019 found that half of the teachers surveyed had considered leaving the profession. Fifty-five percent reported that they would not want their child to become a teacher, and cited insufficient pay and benefits, job stress, and feeling disrespected or undervalued as reasons why.

The pandemic has exacerbated these issues. In the spring of 2020, the New Orleans Trauma-Informed Schools Learning Collaborative surveyed over 400 teachers from forty-five different schools to determine pandemic-related impacts. Of the eighteen Covid-related stressors identified by the survey—issues like being separated from family or friends, the difficulty of transitioning to remote work, increased workloads, and having to teach their own kids—teachers reported experiencing an average of seven stressors. Unsurprisingly, teachers who experienced the most stressors reported worse mental health and struggled to cope and teach. A follow-up survey conducted in June 2021 found that more than a third of teachers met the threshold for a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, and one in five teachers exhibited significant symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder—numbers that exceed those reported by health care workers.

As employers, districts and schools have an ethical obligation to ensure that their staff is working in a healthy, safe, and professional environment. But the responsibility doesn’t stop there, as research shows that teacher stress is linked to poor teacher performance and poor student outcomes. A 2008 study found that perceived teacher burnout had a negative effect on student motivation and learning. And in 2016, researchers found a negative association between teachers’ emotional exhaustion and the class average of students’ grades, standardized test scores, school satisfaction, and perceptions of teacher support. When teachers are burned out, students pay the price.

Teacher burnout is also linked to attrition, and attrition impacts student outcomes, too. A 2013 study in New York City found that students in grade levels with higher teacher turnover score lower in both English language arts and math, and that effects are particularly strong in schools with more low-performing and Black students. A 2020 study of teacher turnover in North Carolina found significant drops in math and reading scores due to middle school teacher turnover. Novice teachers are especially likely to quit, with research showing that more than 44 percent of new teachers in public and private schools leave teaching within five years of entry. Add in the price of turnover—which costs districts more than $2 billion a year—and it’s clear that tackling teacher wellness should be a priority for state leaders.

But what should policymakers do? They could make changes to state law, like eliminating mandatory salary schedules so districts can pay teachers more flexibly or cleaning up messy teacher retirement systems in states where they exist, which would make teaching a more attractive and sustainable career. Innovative initiatives like administering annual statewide surveys to gather teacher feedback and attrition data or funding public-awareness campaigns aimed at improving perceptions of teaching would also be worthy investments. But a good chunk of teachers’ daily stressors—things like inadequate support from administration, school culture, or student discipline issues—are school-based issues that either can’t or shouldn’t be governed by state lawmakers. The mental health needs of teachers also vary widely across geographic regions, schools, and grade or subject matter, so a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work.

Instead of a top-down approach, states could empower districts and schools to craft their own initiatives. Leaders could create statewide competitive grant programs that award funds to schools (or to partnerships between schools and community-based organizations) seeking to implement programs aimed at improving teacher well-being. All public schools would be eligible to apply, and like recently enacted grant programs in Fordham’s home state of Ohio, there should be a rigorous application process. To ensure teacher buy-in, states could require applicants to conduct a needs-based assessment that gathers feedback from a representative sample of staff, and then explain how that feedback was used to craft their proposal. Applicants should also be required to develop a monitoring system that gauges the effectiveness of the program and how it might be sustained after the grant.

Although schools should have plenty of flexibility to come up with innovative solutions, states’ requests for applications should offer some suggestions that leaders could adopt or adapt to fit their needs. Fortunately, the feds have already done some of the legwork. 2021 federal guidance regarding school re-openings after Covid disruptions includes a section on supporting educator and staff well-being, and it suggests the following ideas:

• Develop school leader-to-educator support systems.
  • Offer staff the option to schedule recurring debrief sessions with school leaders that could be used to vent frustrations, voice concerns, or brainstorm solutions.
  • Regularly survey staff to gather data on their perception of workload and morale, and use the data to identify needs and address them.
• Develop peer-to-peer support systems.
  • Create or improve mentoring programs.
  • Establish a “buddy system” and set aside time for teachers to check in weekly or monthly with peers.
  • Establish affinity groups.
• Consider educator workloads.
  • Embed staff planning time into work hours.
  • Schedule a monthly planning day.
  • Send information and updates via email rather than requiring in-person attendance at a daily or weekly staff meetings.
• Be transparent about available mental health supports.
  • Confirm that staff are aware of human resources supports and how to access them.
  • Ensure that mental health services are included in employee assistance programs.
  • Leverage local health departments and community partners to provide wellness services to teachers remotely or on campus.
  • Provide free wellness checkups.
  • Provide free or reduced-price gym memberships.

These aren’t the only ideas worth pursuing, of course. Feedback from teachers could uncover plenty of other possibilities, as different schools will find value in different strategies. For example, a school where a significant percentage of the student body is comprised of English language learners could invest in robust and individualized professional development that equips staff to better serve those students and, in the process, reduce stress. Schools with extended-day and -year calendars could decrease the chances of burnout by building planning periods and days directly into the school schedule (and make sure to honor that time). Schools that employ a significant number of novice educators could go all-in on a rigorous mentorship program that offers far more or better support than what’s already available in some states. Those with considerable frustration about student misbehavior could rethink discipline structures or invest in evidence-based and individualized professional development. The possibilities are endless, but the common underlying thread is meeting the expressed needs of teachers so that teachers can meet the needs of students.

For many states, districts, and schools, investing time, energy, and resources into teacher wellness will require traversing new ground. Most administrators and policymakers pay lip service to the importance of teacher well-being, but they rarely follow through with action. Now is the time to change that. If we want the best and brightest students to become teachers, and if we want to hang on to the excellent educators we already have, we need to make teaching an attractive and sustainable career—and that means tackling teacher wellness.

School systems across the country are training teachers in multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) to tackle issues like social emotional learning, mental health, and behavioral interventions. A recent study from the Institute of Education Sciences investigated the impact of multi-tiered systems of support for behavior.

The two-year study sampled eighty-nine schools within nine districts in six states. These schools were mostly large urban schools serving a majority of students from families with low incomes, Hispanic students, and students limited in their English proficiency. The sample included 25,391 grade 1–5 students in Program Year 1 and 24,842 grade 1–5 students in Program Year 2.

Schools within districts were randomly assigned to participate in the MTSS-B training and technical assistance program or be part of the control group. Half of the schools participated in the treatment and received specialized training over two years. The control group, or nonparticipant schools, proceeded with their standard practices for instruction and behavior.

The study looked primarily at two outcomes: student disruptive behavior and achievement levels. These were measured for all schools after one year of program participation and again after the second year of program participation. Student academic achievement levels were also measured the year after the study’s training and technical assistance ended to examine any potential impact. It also tracked measures of the program’s impact on classroom climate and culture, as well as its impact on prosocial behavior, attention to schoolwork, dysregulation, and internalizing behavior. And, separately, it looked at students in a subgroup identified as struggling with the most disruptive behavior, which comprised 15 percent of the sample.

The study measured these outcomes and impact measures in various ways. Student behavior was tracked via teachers’ ratings of individual student behaviors. Achievement was tracked through state assessment test scores in math and reading for grades 3–5 in the two years of the program and the year afterward. Since the research was conducted in more than one state, and all states have different assessments, the researchers adjusted scores so that they could be comparable within and between districts. School climate was measured through surveys given at the end of the program, and classroom experiences through observations conducted at the end of the program. The study also included observations of school team leaders and principals, and other staff members were interviewed to track behavior policies and practices. Finally, school behavior policy documents were reviewed during each of the two program years and the year afterward.

For students in general, the MTSS-B program was not found to significantly improve disruptive behavior. Nor did the study find any statistically significant improvements in overall student achievement.

The MTSS-B program did, however, have positive effects on both behavioral and academic outcomes for the most disruptive students. Typically, schools see an increase in disruptive behavior as the school year goes on. After the first year of the program, participating schools saw this increase in disruptive behavior reduce by about one-third. This effect persisted in the second year of the program but was not measured in the following year, meaning that we know nothing about the long-term effects of MTSS-B.

The effect on academic outcomes for this subgroup was limited to reading achievement. Students in participating schools scored just -0.16 standard deviations below the average reading achievement scores overall, which was better than the scores for the most disruptive students in the control group. This effect, however, only persisted through the second year of the program. In the year following, when participating schools utilized MTSS-B without the study’s supervision, the schools found no effect on reading achievement.

The study also found that teachers in participating schools had better control in their classrooms. For example, classroom disruptions were found to have decreased by about two instances within a fifteen-minute time period. However, this improvement in classroom management in participating schools did not translate into improvements in the measured outcomes for achievement and behavior, as discussed in previous paragraphs.

Still, it’s encouraging that MTSS-B tactics helped most disruptive students, at least for a couple years, and may help teachers manage their classrooms.

More research needs to be conducted to better understand the improvements within classrooms. Why, for example, did classroom disruptions decrease but overall behavior outcomes remained stagnant? Do the benefits for the most disruptive students persist past two years? Given the lack of benefits for everyone else, however, one might also ask whether there are more effective alternatives for these students.

SOURCE: Barbara Condliffe et al., “Study of Training in Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Behavior: Impacts on Elementary School Students’ Outcomes,” Institute of Education Science, U.S. Department of Education (July 2022).

The Covid-19 pandemic altered public confidence in education and left lasting shortages in the workforce. Youth unemployment rates are recovering, but young people are still in need of job opportunities that will create lasting wealth and opportunities for further education. Youth apprenticeships, defined in the report as “a structured work-based learning program that connects the educational needs of students with the talent needs of industry,” sit at the intersection of secondary education, higher education, and the workforce. As such, they can enhance all three sectors and leave a lasting impact on youth.

A new report by the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA) provides a playbook with eight definitive actions for state leaders and policymakers to take to advance their work-based learning programs. (My colleague Jessica Poiner also recently reviewed this with an eye towards policymakers in Ohio, Fordham’s home state.) Written in collaboration with the National Governors Association’s Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and New America, the report identifies prominent barriers to youth apprenticeship program development at the state level. It then uses New America’s 2017 research into the youth apprenticeship landscape to develop the actions necessary for governors, state leaders, and policymakers to develop “career-oriented, equitable, portable, adaptable, and accountable” apprenticeship programs.

It begins with two big goals for governors: establish a statewide vision with shared definitions for youth apprenticeships and build a statewide governance structure. A statewide vision with shared definitions creates uniformity and solidifies program expectations. It also helps to embed apprenticeships within the state’s goals. Governors should use this uniformity to establish statewide governance structures. Although other state leaders will play a role, governors are the prime movers, and they must decide which agencies oversee the program to reduce overlap or misalignment of resources.

The report then identifies a few actions that are specific to apprenticeship programs. The first is championing youth apprenticeships and work-based learning. This also requires leadership from the governor, this time to attract stakeholders, employers, and participants. State leadership is advised to market work-based learning to the public and explain its potential to create economic development and social and economic mobility.

The second action is encouraging schools to create a career-readiness continuum that promotes apprenticeship opportunities to students who might benefit from work-based learning. Schools should also reduce barriers to entry by recognizing work-based learning credits and altering certain graduation credits, such as in-classroom attendance, to accommodate students who wish to enroll in apprenticeship programs.

The final action that targets program implementation is the use of data to inform program creation and improvement. The report finds that data can help reduce the complexity of adaptation as state leaders try to expand the program into multiple state sectors at once. It then advises that policymakers collect data on the program itself so policymakers can continuously improve and share advancements with the public and other states.

The last section of the report concerns employer support and program resources. The researchers recommend that states increase funding to these initiatives using existing dollars and new sources of federal funding, primarily through grant programs. States should also engage employers by helping establish a mutually-beneficial relationship between the workforce sector and the apprenticeship program. The two would “gain deep understanding of their shared talent needs” and work closely to develop and improve the program. Reducing logistical, regulatory, and financial barriers can help facilitate this. Logistical barriers may include the need for an intermediary agency to help reduce disconnect between the K–12 and workforce sectors, regulatory barriers the need to update work regulations so that youth can participate in certain industries, and financial barriers the need to provide financial incentives or assistance to key employers.

Aligning K–12 schooling, higher education, and the workforce is difficult and complex. PAYA’s playbook is long and presents many challenges for leaders who seek to follow it. But youth apprenticeships also have to potential to provide more children with pathways to college and fulfilling careers, so leaders ought to consider trying. The benefits could be substantial—for both young people and state economies.

SOURCE: “State Policy Playbook to Advance Youth Partnership,” Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (July 2022).

Cheers

• This fall, schools should be open for in-person learning, restrictions like mask mandates and quarantining should be eased or eliminated, and K–12 education should look like it did pre-pandemic. —Joseph G. Allen
• A new policy in Washington State would allow high school students to earn class credit for work at afterschool jobs. —Seattle Times
• Summer kindergarten camps in Pittsburgh are catching up young students who missed out on preschool during the pandemic. —NEXT Pittsburg

Jeers

• California—where 37% of fourth grade students are unable to read at a basic level—has been far too slow to develop strategies to identify and support students with dyslexia. —LAist
• In Texas, an initiative to expand school choice is finding opposition in rural parts of the state. —The Texas Tribune
• “L.A. teachers union demands withdrawal of extra school days in first clash under Carvalho.” —Los Angeles Times

• School choice is a contentious issue in Texas’s gubernatorial race between Greg Abbott and Beto O’Rourke. —The Texas Tribune
• Parent protests over school budget cuts have pressured Mayor Eric Adams to take the unusual step of renegotiating NYC’s education budget with the City Council. —Chalkbeat New York
• Reports on the “exodus” of teachers leaving the profession are likely overblown. —The Hechinger Report
• Could new classroom technology help American students break out of a decades-long reading crisis? —Wall Street Journal
• A new meta-study of K–12 test scores finds that student achievement has risen while racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps have narrowed in the last fifty years.  —M. Danish Shakeel and Paul E. Peterson

1. In case you missed it, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Department of Education earlier this week. The suit challenges the legality of new federal regulations that would serve to significantly restrict access to Charter School Grant (CSP) funds. (The Center Square, 8/8/22)
   
   

2. In Fordham’s ancestral seat, the countdown is on to the very first first day at the Greater Dayton School. The brand new private school with an innovative structure and extensive supports for its low-income families will welcome its first students—in a temporary location—on Monday. Great news! (Dayton Daily News, 8/10/22)
   
   

3. Meanwhile, the upcoming tenth anniversary of the Ann Jerkins-Harris Academy of Educational Excellence, a charter school in Toledo, is such a great that it is being celebrated by a TV news outlet… (13ABC News, Toledo, 8/9/22) …and lauded by the Blade too. Amazing! (Toledo Blade, 8/9/22)
   
   

4. Canton City School’s McKinley High School has been redesigned for the new school year. Its approximately 2,000 students have been randomly designated to one of four “teams” to create four smaller entities within the building. The purpose? To create “a smaller school environment” to help students “build relationships with the adults – teachers, principals, counselors and student success coaches – who will be educating them throughout the rest of their high school career.” This follows on the heels of a different attempt at reorganization last year (the “remarkable” and “game changing” Design for Excellence), which itself was meant to address lingering concerns from the merger of two high schools into one back in 2015. While Design for Excellence was supposed to save the district $7 million over three years, apparently money is not a primary concern in the new effort. We are told that “each team will have its own principal and secretary, two counselors and two student success coaches who will stay with this same group of students for the rest of their high school career. Each team, which will have roughly 500 students, also will have the same set of teachers each year and will have a designated area within the school.” Lotsa luck, y’all. (Canton Repository, 8/8/22)
   
   

5. Findlay City Schools is a small district with a fairly compact footprint, so perhaps the changes they have made to their union bus drivers’ contract in an effort to improve transportation for students and families are not readily transferrable to larger or more spread out districts. However, I feel like some of the inflexibility baked into that contract in the past as described here—which this effort is attempting to undo with some innovative hiring, scheduling, and technology use—is probably quite common in districts large and small across the Buckeye State. (Findlay Courier, 8/9/22)

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Last Tuesday, Ohioans finally voted in primaries for state representative and (if applicable) state senator after the traditional spring primary was delayed due to redistricting issues. As might be expected for a summer election with few competitive races, statewide voter turnout was a dismal 7.9 percent.

In addition to primaries, a handful of districts had tax measures on the ballot. In the Dayton Daily News’s election coverage, it noted two such levy requests in the area, one for Ross and the other for Clark-Shawnee. The Ross tax request lost by a 64-36 percent margin, while Clark-Shawnee’s narrowly passed by eleven (yes eleven) votes. By the looks of it, roughly a quarter of voters in those districts turned out. The Ross school board has already said their proposal will be back on the ballot in November.

Ohio’s summer elections aren’t exactly a shining example of democracy in action. The irregular timing discourages participation and results in a small fraction of voters—likely those with the strongest interest in the outcome—holding undue influence. And no one should expect citizens to be plugged into local politics year-round. In a promising move, legislation passed last December by the House would eliminate August elections, including the ability of districts to put tax measures on the ballot during the dog days of summer.[1] The Senate should take up this cause in the coming months.

Not only is the timing quirky, but the type of levy that Ross and Clark-Shawnee proposed is also unusual. In Ross’s case, the district requested a new “emergency levy” that would have raised the property taxes of its citizens. Clark-Shawnee had the same type of levy on the ballot, but it was asking voters to renew two previously approved emergency levies passed in 2012 and 2014. While voters in that district wouldn’t have experienced a tax hike, their taxes would have been cut had they rejected the proposal.

Despite the alarming terminology, an emergency levy is not as ominous as it sounds. It doesn’t require a district to be in an actual “fiscal emergency,” a formal designation declared by the auditor of state that results in a district being overseen by a state commission. In fact, neither Ross nor Clark-Shawnee is in fiscal emergency; they aren’t even in the less-severe distress categories known as “fiscal watch” or “fiscal caution.” According to the Ohio Department of Taxation, 215 school districts—about one in three—imposed an emergency levy in 2021. Yet only two districts are currently in any of the state’s three categories of fiscal distress.

By state law, all districts have to say is that the dollars are needed “to avoid an operating deficit.” At first blush, the clause doesn’t sound problematic until we realize how much leeway it gives districts. For instance, it doesn’t say anything about the size of the deficit they must be facing. Does a $100 shortfall count? Moreover, districts could “game” their budget projections to create deficits on paper that allow them to propose an emergency levy. Or they could choose not to take reasonable cost-containment measures—creating an “emergency” of their own doing—in the hopes of a taxpayer bailout. Yet by using “emergency” language, districts likely increase the odds that voters will approve a tax hike (as opposed to putting a general-operating levy request before voters asking for additional dollars).

The ballot language for emergency levies is also peculiar. The figure to the right displays Ross’s levy request as presented on voter ballots. What jumps out is the large, boldfaced text “avoiding an operating deficit.” Remember, the ballot language for a normal, general operating or bond levy does not have any bold or large-print font in the question (see here for an example). But state law actually requires the purpose of an emergency levy to be printed in bold and with typeface that is “at least twice the size” of the font around it. As we know from surveys, the wording and presentation of questions can affect the response. What we have here is akin to a loaded question. The language in bold print is likely to lead voters towards a “yes” vote, perhaps out of fear that failing to do so will cause financial ruin for the district (though it could work the other way if people are led into believing a district is mismanaging funds). In the end, the ballot language doesn’t guarantee victory for one side or the other, but it could tip the scales in close races.

In my view, Ohio should eliminate emergency levies altogether. Current emergency levies could be grandfathered or extended, but districts would no longer be able to propose a new one. If districts believe they need more funding, they can always put forward a normal operating tax request before voters without the brazen “emergency” terminology and the outrageous ballot language. Absent elimination, legislators could at least tighten statutory requirements to allow only districts in state-designated fiscal distress categories to put this type of levy on the ballot. They should also consider removing the provision that calls for the large, bold-faced print. The question should be presented neutrally to voters without pushing them in one direction or the other.

Ohio taxpayers deserve to be treated fairly when their local districts request funding. They should have the opportunity to vote on tax rates at conventional times—spring and fall—when decisions about elected offices and other political matters are being made. Taxpayers should also be presented an evenhanded tax request, not one that uses frightening language. With some changes to current statute, state lawmakers would encourage broader participation and present a more neutral question.